Texas was won by Republican nominee John McCain by an 11.8% margin of victory despite "failing to deliver written certification of their nominations" on time to appear on the ballot. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee and eventual President of the United States, made a similar error.[1]

Prior to the election, all 17 news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or otherwise considered as a safe red state. This is because although the state is very diverse and has a huge Latino population, Latinos in Texas - despite being fairly Democratic - make up only 20% of the electorate. Polling throughout the state showed Republican John McCain consistently and substantially leading Democrat Barack Obama. On Election Day, McCain won the state, although his margin was less than native son George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. This was the first election since 1996 in which the margin of victory was less than 1 million votes. With its 34 electoral votes, Texas was the largest prize for McCain in 2008.

Polling

Fundraising

Advertising and visits

Obama and his interest groups spent $9,917,565. McCain and his interest groups spent $33,983.[20] Both campaigns visited the state twice.[21]

Analysis

Voter casting a ballot in Texas

Texas, split between the south and southwest regions, has become a consistently Republican state at all levels and is the home state of then President George W. Bush. Economically and racially diverse, Texas includes a huge swath of the Bible Belt where many voters, especially those in rural Texas, identify as born-again or evangelical Christians and therefore tend to vote Republican due to the party's opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Although once part of the Solid South, the last time Texas voted for a Democratic presidential nominee was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

McCain did well throughout the state, winning the vast majority of counties by double digits. He took practically every county in Eastern Texas - large regions of which once voted Democratic. All the suburbs of the major cities voted Republican by large margins. He also dominated the Texas Panhandle (including Amarillo), the Permian Basin (including Midland and Odessa) and the South Plains (including Lubbock), three of the most conservative regions in the country. He won these three regions by margins of three-to-one—his largest margin of victory in the entire country.[22] These areas had been among the first in Texas where the old-line conservative Democrats started splitting their tickets and voting Republican nationally; some counties in this region haven't supported a Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948. King County, a thinly populated county in the Panhandle, gave McCain 92.64% of the vote to Obama's 4.91%--McCain's biggest margin in any county in the nation.

Obama, however, did win major urban counties such as Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties—home to the cities of Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston respectively. Dallas and Harris had been among the first areas of the state to turn Republican, largely due to an influx of Northern expatriates in the 1940s and 1950s. Neither county had supported a Democrat for president since 1964. Bexar had last gone Democratic in 1996.[23] Liberal whites and Hispanic voters in Dallas combined with heavy turnout of African Americans in Houston, and Hispanic turnout in San Antonio helped give Obama the edge and carry these three counties. Obama also performed strongly in Travis County, which contains the state capital of Austin. Obama also carried El Paso County, which contains the city of El Paso, due in large part to heavy support by Hispanics. Obama also carried many of the Latino-majority counties in the Rio Grande Valley along the border with Mexico, which have strongly supported Democrats for decades. Although Obama lost the rural Tarrant county, he did well in the southern and eastern parts of Fort Worth and the eastern part of Arlington.[24]

Electors

Technically the voters of Texas cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Texas is allocated 34 electors because it has 32 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 34 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 34 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them.[25] An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2008, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

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